Thursday, January 24, 2013

It's hard to believe that less than a
year has passed since the skipjack Wilma Lee assumed
control of my life. The 95%-restored 72-year-old oyster dredger was
donated to the local non-profit Ocracoke Alive, Inc. last February
and with the help of a motley crew of enthusiastic volunteers and a
generous grant from the Outer Banks Community Foundation, I went
about the pursuit of a U.S. Coast Guard Certificate of Inspection to
enable the old girl to carry passengers.

The
certification process had become considerably more complicated since
I'd last gone through it 27 years before with my schooner Windfall
so it was not until October 3 that we finally received the Coast
Guard's green light. That put us at the very end of the tourist
season, just in time to turn our attention to all the cosmetic issues
that had been put on hold during the more urgent business of
obtaining the certificate. Most of this work involves cleaning,
sanding, painting and varnishing but some of it deals with replacing
worn out stuff.

I
mentioned that the skipjack was 95% restored. The boat was
originally built in Wingate, MD in 1940 by a famous shipwright named
Bronza Parks. She dredged oysters on Chesapeake Bay until 1996 when,
badly rotted, she was purchased by Herb Carden of Sandy Point, VA.
Mr. Carden had a deep affection for the Chesapeake's work boats and a
strong desire to preserve them. Fortunately for Wilma Lee,
he also had a large lumber company! As Mr. Carden and his employees
began to strip away the deteriorated wood, they soon realized the
boat was in worse shape than expected. Practically everything except
the keel, stem and spars had to be replaced with new material. But
finally, in 2002, she was relaunched looking better than ever.

Along with the
original spars, Mr. Carden retained the original mast hoops. These
are laminated wooden rings (17 of them) which encircle the mast and
attach to the luff (forward edge) of the main sail. To be honest,
neither I, the two surveyors who checked out the boat nor the coast
guard inspectors had paid much attention to the condition of these
babies until (wouldn't you know it?), the day we had to take the
coast guard inspectors on a sail. We hoisted the gigantic main sail,
the wind billowed it out

and three of the
mast hoops flew into pieces that showered down on us! Needless to
say, there was a lot of throat clearing and eye rolling as I assured
the inspectors that (a) we still have 14 hoops holding the sail in
place and (b) we'd replace all of the hoops with new ones as soon as
possible.

Well, last week
Bill Monticone got down to the serious business of making new mast
hoops. After scanning the internet for advice on how to proceed, he
built a custom steam box out of PVC pipe, a molding wheel out of
plywood, and proceeded to manufacture ash hoops. He asked me how I
thought we should get the new hoops onto the mast (short of pulling
the 65' cypress trunk clean out of the boat!). It was obviously a
choice of either spiraling the hoops onto the mast like a key on a
key ring and then fastening them together with rivets and/or bolts,
or borrowing a bucket truck, going to the top of the mast, detaching
all of the standing rigging (wires that support the mast), and
dropping them down from the top.

I didn't know the
answer but I did know that there was only one best way to do it and
that Capt. Ed Farley would know what it was. Sure enough, a brief
e-mail exchange with Capt. Ed told me exactly how to proceed (the key
chain approach). It wasn't the first time I'd turned to Ed Farley for
advice and I'm pretty sure it won't be the last. Followers of this
erratic column may recall that he was the oyster-dredging captain
who, on a cold day last March, took me and two other
gluttons-for-punishment on an all day dredging trip out of Deal
Island, MD. At the tender age of 61, he was far from the oldest of
Chesapeake Bay's six remaining skipjack skippers. That distinction
belonged to The Reverend “Daddy Art” Daniels who was exactly 30
years older! Last I heard from Capt. Ed, “Daddy Art” is still at
it this year at 92.

I'm frequently
asked by my passengers if I've been a sailor all my life and if I
don't say, “not yet!” I usually say, “so far.” But I've
always been quick to point out that I'm still just learning. If I
thought I knew anything about sailboats and sailing, I've recently
come to realize there was a lot I didn't know about skipjacks which
are somewhat of a breed apart.. But it's been a relief and a
pleasure to discover that the small but dedicated fraternity of
skipjack owners consists of a terrific bunch of guys who are always
happy to share what they know. This includes not only Capt. Farley
but also Capt. Ben Bunn of the Ada Mae in New Bern, Capt. Wade
Murphy of the Rebecca T. Ruark in Tilghman Island, MD, Capt.
Jack Russell of Dee of St. Mary's in St. Mary's, MD and Capt.
Frank Newton of the Nathan of Dorchester in Cambridge, MD.
(There are several others but these are the ones whose advice I've
requested and received). Pretty much all of them, myself included,
are, like most of the Wilma Lee's volunteers, eligible for $1
cups of coffee at McDonald's. These vessels, which date back to the
late 1880's, don't seem to hold much appeal for the younger
generation of mariners.

Having been a great
eater of oysters since my early teens, I also might have thought I
knew a thing or two about Crassostrea Virginica (Atlantic
Coast oysters). I even spent a summer of my college years at the
University of Georgia Marine Institute at Sapelo Island working on a
federally funded oyster study. But kind friends have recently lent
me a great number of books about oysters: not only the biology but
the history, economics and politics as well as the technology of
cultivation, harvesting, transporting and cooking of these critters.
Clearly I've got a lot to learn in that department as well but, hey,
there's plenty of time. I'm not even seventy yet!